A library of memories

...musings on libraries

The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about libraries. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!

Dear Creative Soul,

I have spent the morning on this breezy Spring day feeling the sun on my back: walking with wildflowers, eating lunch outside while watching singing honeyeaters dart among the flowering bottlebrush, watering the vegetable seeds I planted yesterday, picking broad beans. As I write, a cup of freshly brewed chai sits beside me; the room is spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger root, peppercorn, star anise, pure sticky honey. I bought this tea last weekend while visiting Mount Barker, 350km south of Perth; it is a comforting tea, not too spicy, not sweet, perfectly aromatic.

"Life is like a library owned by an author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him." - Henry Emerson Fosdick.

While we were in Mount Barker, we parked near the small town’s library, which reminded me that I had intended to contribute to

SmallStack

’s Seed Pod project … and so, instead of writing about a mountain hike, my words are walking me down memory lane. They are walking me right into this place below - Penrith Library. It was dark and quiet, a place of whispery voices and musty old-book smells; it was overwhelming and exciting, like walking out of an airport into a new country, full of unfamiliar words and places, smells, sights, sounds. I felt at home instantly.

Penrith Library. I remember being eight or nine and watching Seven Little Australians on a tiny TV mounted high in a corner in a room at the front.

That library is long gone, replaced in the ‘90s with a shinier, bigger model with self-checkout lanes that seemed futuristic at the time. And although I have since been members of many libraries, in many states of Australia, this library is where my love of reading (and writing) really took root.

In 2016, when I was co-director of Australian small press Serenity Press, I wrote about my love of books and libraries in a short essay called “Writing the Dream” (Writing the Dream: 24 Authors, One Dream, 24 Inspiring Stories, Serenity Press 2016).

Whether deliberate or not, reading became a form of escape early in my life. Words and stories fascinated me; I was bored only if I had no book to read (or paper to draw on if I had no book). Although I enjoyed writing, and proved good at it during my school years and beyond, books were my constant companion, the friends I could not live without.

My childhood is filled with memories of being a reader. Sitting on a hard chair at my grandfather’s house sifting through old Readers Digest issues for the funny bits. Being given a merit award at school for being a walking encyclopaedia. Hiding in the corner of the school library on my once-a-year and much anticipated library duty day, pretending I couldn’t hear the librarian calling. Reading the hymns (and mentally high fiving when I found one I recognised) instead of listening to the pastor in church. Using a half-nibbled carrot as a bookmark (I know it’s shameful) when Mum called me to do a job for her. Walking into a pole because I was reading a library book instead of looking (this happened more than once, which either proves that I was a slow learner in a spatial sense, or that some books were too good to wait for). Not minding Sunday afternoon drives because it meant uninterrupted reading time. Disappearing to my bedroom as a teenager with a book and a bowl of popcorn. Friday afternoon library trips during which I always checked out the maximum number of books. Enduring a muttered “That book is disgusting” from a well-meaning librarian, who thought I was too young at sixteen to read Puberty Blues. Hiding said book from my mum, and secretly being appalled by the things the thirteen-year-old girls got up to in panel vans (although I would have died before admitting this to that librarian).

For some, books are one of the forgotten relics of childhood, left to gather dust alongside balding teddy bears (and posters of once spunky rock stars who these invite the question, “What were you thinking?”), dolls, marbles, fragranced eraser collections and well-thumbed comic books. Reading for me, has remained a constant means of relaxation. Surrounded by candles in the bath (I’ve only ever dropped a book once). Curled up under a bed with a torch and book while playing hide-and-seek with my then three-year-old half-sister. Driving straight to the library post-university exams every semester to indulge my need for comfort, not academic, books. Listening to the War of the Worlds while crossing the Nullarbor. Reading to the babes in my belly. Donning fingerless gloves in winter (full gloves don’t work) but still having to turn the pages as fast as possible before shoving them under the blanket for a precious warm minute. And although I’ve never again used a carrot as a bookmark, I still experience that fleeting irritation when my nose is in a book and I’m interrupted.

When people ask, “What books do you like best?”, I’m stumped. At eight, I discovered the Narnia series and immersed myself in C.S. Lewis’s fantastical world of anthropomorphic animals, dryads, naiads, fauns, witches, goblins and magical wardrobes. By the time I was ten, I’d devoured the Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Naughtiest Girl and Famous Five series. My liking for Enid Blyton won me no respect from Mrs Bounds, the librarian of the foghorn voice, who did not rein in her disappointment at finding I’d chosen a Famous Five boxset for one of my Year Five Pupil of the Year book prizes. I stuck my nose in the air. What did she know?

By twelve, I was racing to the library with along with all the other Year Seven girls to be the first to get the new Sweet Dreams or Sweet Valley High book. And then I discovered Anne of Green Gables in a cardboard box set aside for the op shop. Oozing that old-book smell, it had long lost its dust cover and had a simple yellow hardcover. Is it possible to fall in love with reading all over again? I read that book over and over, followed by the rest of the Anne books. How I wanted Anne-with-an-e to be my kindred spirit (I tried talking like her for a while but my overtures about being in the “depths of despair” when Mum said I was too young to go to the shops with my friends when unheard). I wish I’d kept that copy; it’s long gone - a victim to one of my many interstate relocations.

In my late teens, I added Stephen King, Jackie Collins, Colleen McCullough, Danielle Steel, Robin Cook and John Saul to my reading list. In my twenties I was hooked on James Patterson, Jonathon Kellerman, Patricia Cornwall, and other psychological and crime fiction writers. In my thirties, I set such books aside for less psychologically disturbing reads, which I’d found were a little too close to home during a difficult period in my life. I still have trouble with books that wobble my psychological balance. So, you now have a picture of a reader who resists putting one genre on a pedestal, but has more insight as to what is good for her soul.

These days I still regularly visit my two local libraries (it was so hard during lockdown - I bought so many books!) and I love finding free libraries. Here’s one I found while travelling in Berlin last year:

And here’s the book I found:

And before I disappear into the pages of one of my current reads (Chasing Fog by

Laura Pashby

and All the Broken Places by John Boyne), here’s a peek at a library inside the New Norcia Benedictine Community in Western Australia - seeing the inside of this part of the monastery while at a writing festival in 2015 was a rare privilege.

Library at New Norcia Benedictine Community

Want to see more posts from this Seed Pod or join in on the fun? Head over to our thread to learn more!